The $10,000 was used as an example that wouldn't come close to the value of a single mature 20"+ oak. But hey whatever you say as your experience must be better than mine despite my work in the field. Seems like you and I have disagreed on these things in the past.

I worked for a municipality and was responsible for acquiring dozens of parcels for ROW and easements. Many of these went to the commissioners and the commissioners were former politicians and lawyers for the most parts (they set their own pay, so it paid well). I found that they tried to appease both sides, so some owners came in without counsel and with pretty shaky comps. As long as the request wasn't outrageous, they would try to split the offer and asking price down the middle, or close to that.

That was nearly 20 years ago, so things may have changed. It was bewildering to see them pay 50% more than our appraisal just because the owner said he thought it was worth a 7-11 pad site, even though it was zoned residential.

I love reading threads where two people, who both claim to be experts on a subject I know nothing about, have a dick measuring contest.

It's one of my favorite things on texags.

Regarding question on location in McCulloch county. We are about 12 miles north of Brady on 377 towards Brownwood. Our family has owned the land since 1916. Thanks to all that have responded. It is no wonder that my Dad caved in early and settled for way too little three years ago as they hold all the cards.

cledus6150 said:

---

The $10,000 was used as an example that wouldn't come close to the value of a single mature 20"+ oak. But hey whatever you say as your experience must be better than mine despite my work in the field. Seems like you and I have disagreed on these things in the past.

---

The problem with this whole arborist analysis is that when you apply it to the real world transactions between the willing buyers and willing sellers, it doesn't hold up. Do tress add value to a property? Generally yes. But taking the raw land and adding a tree value doesn't account for the transactions where there are similar properties with similar trees trading in the market.

And here's another problem: what about diminishing returns? So let's say one lone post oak is worth $20,000 by your estimate. What about the second one, does it contribute the same? What about the third, fourth, fifth, or twentieth one? As an example, I was involved on a project where this came up. I had a landowner present me with a value from his arborist that the five trees being acquired were worth roughly $30,000 ($6,000/tree). He'd paid $50,000 for this two acre property a year prior, it was confirmed to be an arms-length sale, and there was adequate data in the market to show that the raw land with trees was worth between $50,000-$55,000, and land without trees was worth around $45,000-$50,000. See the problem?

Eminent Domain is some bad stuff and it saddens me that you all are going through this with family property.

Look on the bright side, these are private companies doing it via the state, you all would cringe if some of the stuff the federal government is doing along the border for the wall deal. Talk about heavy handed, it is pretty rough. Trees? they don't care. Over two hundred year old cemeteries, not a concern at all. Cutting you off from as much as 2/3rd of your land via the wall/fence, tough sheet.

As society and populations expand this is a function of governement that truly needs to be regulated, both private and public.

I hope you all get fair consideration and as much as you can coming to you.

HTownAg98 said:

---

cledus6150 said:

---

The $10,000 was used as an example that wouldn't come close to the value of a single mature 20"+ oak. But hey whatever you say as your experience must be better than mine despite my work in the field. Seems like you and I have disagreed on these things in the past.

---

The problem with this whole arborist analysis is that when you apply it to the real world transactions between the willing buyers and willing sellers, it doesn't hold up. Do tress add value to a property? Generally yes. But taking the raw land and adding a tree value doesn't account for the transactions where there are similar properties with similar trees trading in the market.

And here's another problem: what about diminishing returns? So let's say one lone post oak is worth $20,000 by your estimate. What about the second one, does it contribute the same? What about the third, fourth, fifth, or twentieth one? As an example, I was involved on a project where this came up. I had a landowner present me with a value from his arborist that the five trees being acquired were worth roughly $30,000 ($6,000/tree). He'd paid $50,000 for this two acre property a year prior, it was confirmed to be an arms-length sale, and there was adequate data in the market to show that the raw land with trees was worth between $50,000-$55,000, and land without trees was worth around $45,000-$50,000. See the problem?

---

You are assuming the value of the tree is only tied to the soil it is rooted in. I'm not a lawyer, but we do provide tree valuations for folks.

Trees have value that goes is seperate from the land value. They have asthetic value to the folks that drive up and down the county road, they have value to wildlife that might only visit that land for a short time, they have value by intercepting rain water and having roots that hold soil (which has great value beyond the fence line of the owner of the tree), I could go on and on. For these reasons and many others trees can often have monetary value that exceeds the soil they are rooted in.

E.D. cases are a unique situation where I believe you are correct in that tree valuations cannot be submitted (again, not a lawyer).

Edited for fat fingers.

I have always felt like we do pipeline easements wrong. They shouldn't be paid based on the value of the land. They should paid to the owner monthly or annually based on the value of the product crossing the property.

If you need the government's assistance to cross my land and make a profit off of every barrel of oil that crosses it, I should be able to get a regular piece of that pie too, not just a one time payment. Of you can get a better deal from my neighbor then let's talk.

That's some serious BS they only get a one time payment. Is that common with cell phone towers and transmission lines too?

This is pretty ****ed up.

Truth that a pipeline will not only carry only oil or gas but also getting paid to carry fiber optics. Why should not the landowner get a percentage?

Spore Ag said:

---

Truth that a pipeline will not only carry only oil or gas but also getting paid to carry fiber optics. Why should not the landowner get a percentage?

---

Percentage would be a bookkeeping nightmare, varying flow and thousands of landowners. An initial damages and annual lease would be a better proposition.

I have nothing to add, but tree law is a big deal on reddit and always makes me laugh.

https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/7p3ubz/updateoregon_neighbor_cut_down_trees_on_my/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

rab79 said:

---

Spore Ag said:

---

Truth that a pipeline will not only carry only oil or gas but also getting paid to carry fiber optics. Why should not the landowner get a percentage?

---

Percentage would be a bookkeeping nightmare, varying flow and thousands of landowners. An initial damages and annual lease would be a better proposition.

---

If you set the rate at, say, $x.xx/bbl/ft renegotiable every 10 year how would that be hard?

At a minimum, it ought to be a lease instead of permanent easement. Land use and value changes over time. A permanent easement creates an encumbrance on the property that is next to impossible undo. The compensation is a one time transaction set at at the time of acquisition with no consideration for future land value, yet the easement often negatively impacts the surrounding land value (I am less likely to consider buying a property with a pipeline easement than a property without). In the case of eminent domain, the landowner is at a disadvantage. I think a renewable lease would level the playing field.

Mas89 said:

---

Yes there have been several improvements over the years but generally speaking the major needed changes have been defeated every session.

This years session was a real chit show with Midland Rep Tom Craddick killing the e. d. Bill after the oil and gas lobby negotiators had supposedly reached an agreement for a meaningful bill with the bills sponsors.
Old Tom has been a Texas state legislator serving Midland well for 51 years now. He was first elected to the Tx house in 1968, the same year Nixon was elected president. His daughter Christi Craddick is one of our three elected railroad commissioners.

---

and Craddick was appointed to lead the committee by the speaker who knew exactly what would happen when he made the appointment.

Burdizzo said:

---

rab79 said:

---

Spore Ag said:

---

Truth that a pipeline will not only carry only oil or gas but also getting paid to carry fiber optics. Why should not the landowner get a percentage?

---

Percentage would be a bookkeeping nightmare, varying flow and thousands of landowners. An initial damages and annual lease would be a better proposition.

---

If you set the rate at, say, $x.xx/bbl/ft renegotiable every 10 year how would that be hard?

At a minimum, it ought to be a lease instead of permanent easement. Land use and value changes over time. A permanent easement creates an encumbrance on the property that is next to impossible undo. The compensation is a one time transaction set at at the time of acquisition with no consideration for future land value, yet the easement often negatively impacts the surrounding land value (I am less likely to consider buying a property with a pipeline easement than a property without). In the case of eminent domain, the landowner is at a disadvantage. I think a renewable lease would level the playing field.

---

Pipeline easements are abandoned all the time. You can go on the Texas railroad Commission GIS website and find all kinds of pipelines that have been abandoned. And the land value paid at the time of acquisition takes those future values into account. That's what value is: it's the present value of future benefits.

Eminent domain, in Texas legal sense, is treated as a damage to the property. So the measure is what has the landowner lost, not what the condemnor has gained.

Pipeline easements are abandoned by the easement owner by choice, but the fee owner can't force them out. That is why the landowner is at a disadvantage.

Future damages are absolutely not part of the compensation because they don't take into account changes in land use over time. If they were, permanent easements would be more like a renegotiable lease. We recently sold my great grandmother's farm. It was once rural farmland. At some point decades ago two easements were acquired on it - one for for a gas pipeline and one for a city water main. By the time we sold it the land was no longer rural and was valuable commercial real estate worth over $10/sq ft. It would have been worth more save for the easements cutting through the property. There is nothing you can show me that the past compensation decades ago on rural farmland was adequate to make up for the unrealize appreciation of the property in today's dollars. I doubt the few thousand decades ago in compensation would be worth a few hundred thousand in lost value in today's dollars if that money had been put in the bank.

Granted, no one has a crystal ball to know how land use and how much property value will change over time, but to say a one time compensation takes that into account isn't really a genuine statement IMO.

rab79 said:

---

Spore Ag said:

---

Truth that a pipeline will not only carry only oil or gas but also getting paid to carry fiber optics. Why should not the landowner get a percentage?

---

Percentage would be a bookkeeping nightmare, varying flow and thousands of landowners. An initial damages and annual lease would be a better proposition.

---

They seem to have it figured out for my share of minerals that are pumped out of the ground.

rab79 said:

---

Spore Ag said:

---

Truth that a pipeline will not only carry only oil or gas but also getting paid to carry fiber optics. Why should not the landowner get a percentage?

---

Percentage would be a bookkeeping nightmare, varying flow and thousands of landowners. An initial damages and annual lease would be a better proposition.

---

Not to mention that doing so would drive the price of the product up to a point where nobody could actually afford it. And how would you actually manage that in the first place? You might have 2,000 landowners on a single pipeline run - each one of them getting a theoretical percentage of the volume of product at a spot price? Is that a daily spot with the volume that day, average spot over a quarter with the volume? That would be a literal nightmare to try to capture and calculate and incorporate into the price of the end product.

ED is a necessary evil unfortunately - and should be used as sparingly as possible. I'm not particularly a fan of using it for O&G pipelines because even though they are a quasi utility, they are still a private sector good. Roads, municipal water lines, sewer, etc. are a bit different in my opinion in that they are a true public property or utility.

Problem is that without the ability to use ED, odds are we wouldn't ever be able to get a pipeline easement completed because there will always be a landowner or handful of landowners that are vehemently against any easement across their land. Understandable. The alternative to pipelines is not all that great - I shudder at the thought of moving crude or NG by 18 wheelers - we'd have tens of thousands more of them on the road. Trains? Nope, that's not happening either. Or we could just not have that resource and the subsequent economy (and goods and services) from it.

Yeah, I agree ED is a necessary evil. I just think it is too one-sided in favor of the operator, especially in terms of how the compensation is determined.

A century+ ago people wanted the railroad to come to their town because it meant commerce. Now rural landowners fight the railroad. Urban folks loves them some high speed rail, though. Go figure.

Your last paragraph about having a crystal ball is why future uses that are speculative are not allowed to be considered in damages. The damages are based on the "reasonably foreseeable" uses of the property at the time of condemnation. This was one of the main holdings in City of Austin v. Cannizzo.

As many of you might know, I represent landowners in eminent domain cases involving pipelines, power lines, whatever. I can't stand eminent domain, but it is a necessary evil.

While on first glance we think it would be great to pay a "through put" or percentage, in practice it would be an accounting nightmare. Also, it could have serious effects on compensation in other areas. It would also drive the price of NG through the roof.

The compensation model has always been value of land taken and damage to the remainder. If you start looking at value to the taker, it gets crazy. What if this model would have been used when Jerry Jones took houses for Jerry World? On the converse what if the state applied this model when it took lane for roads? There's no income to the state associated with roads, so does this mean the landowner gets nothing?

It's far from a perfect system and it most certainly flies in the face of capitalism and property rights, but it's a sacrifice I guess we make.

Stephen at msn "dash" law dot com.

In other words "we have always done it this way because it is easy, but not necessarily fair."

Mutual funds establish a NAV at the end of every day based on the composite price of their holdings at each day's close. I don't see why it would be that hard to do something similar for a monthly average price of that particular grade of crude in the pipeline that crosses a piece of property.

Besides, the world needs more accountants.

No, because it is based on centuries of case law that derive from the doctrine of "make the offended party whole" as best as possible. It's just like any civil tort. If your neighbor starts a fire and burns your house to the ground, you are entitled to be put in place as good as your situation before your house burned down. You don't get more because now your neighbor's house has a lake view and he gained more in value to his property than your house was worth.

I guess my problem is that I am not a lawyer.

They way I look at it is the pipeline is not only damaging my property, they are also gaining utility from it from which I am excluded. That is why I think it should be more like a lease. Highest and best use, and all that jazz..

My primary concern in pipeline ED matters has always been in minimizing the impact on the landowner's interest through proper routing, depth and construction issues, and in securing a full compensation for the long-term damage to the remainder of the parcel.

That said, since the issue has been raised here of providing ongoing compensation to a landowner based on the product being moved across his property, and the difficulty of valuing that, I might offer this.

Don't the common carrier pipeline companies publish and/or contract their rates for transporting the product?

I'm sure they must bill their customers based on volumes. If you're looking to compensate the landowner, just give him a fixed percentage of those billings. It would undoubtedly be a very small percentage, but it shouldn't involve any daily calculations of the price of oil requiring a new army of accountants. The question would be -- how many barrel-miles did farmer Jones' property accommodate this month? Cut him a check.

Just a thought, since the issue was raised.

I don't necessarily disagree with you - remember, I am an advocate for the landowners. I'm against private companies taking private land, but perhaps the public carrier/utility argument makes sense - I don't know. Nevertheless, decades of law have recognized ED and has held that the compensation is land taken and damage to the remainder based on the highest and best use of the land. Most often, the highest and best use of the land is agricultural, and paid as such. But, what if the highest and best use was for the laying of pipeline?? What if a landowner recognized that his land is best suited for pipeline?? Hmmmmmmmm. Now things get a bit interesting.

Now you're getting into corridor valuation, which in the appraisal world, is a term of art and has a very specific meaning. In these cases, I can't see how any individual landowner wouldn't meet the definition of having a corridor. Plus, this was already tried in Exxon v. Zwahr, and WestTex v. Bulanek, and it failed.

Burdizzo said:

---

Yeah, I agree ED is a necessary evil. I just think it is too one-sided in favor of the operator, especially in terms of how the compensation is determined.

A century+ ago people wanted the railroad to come to their town because it meant commerce. Now rural landowners fight the railroad. Urban folks loves them some high speed rail, though. Go figure.

---

The compensation is determined by the county commission court, no? Those are elected officials.

Burdizzo said:

---

I guess my problem is that I am not a lawyer.

They way I look at it is the pipeline is not only damaging my property, they are also gaining utility from it from which I am excluded. That is why I think it should be more like a lease. Highest and best use, and all that jazz..

---

Depends on how you look at that too. It's not always viewed as a damage - in my neck of the woods, they cut ROW's that wouldn't be there otherwise, which increase grazing areas, hunting opportunities, access to land, etc.

Just a different viewpoint, nothing more than that.

schmellba99 said:

---

Burdizzo said:

---

Yeah, I agree ED is a necessary evil. I just think it is too one-sided in favor of the operator, especially in terms of how the compensation is determined.

A century+ ago people wanted the railroad to come to their town because it meant commerce. Now rural landowners fight the railroad. Urban folks loves them some high speed rail, though. Go figure.

---

The compensation is determined by the county commission court, no? Those are elected officials.

---

No, they are called special commissioners. They are appointed by the court to hold the hearing. The only stipulation for being a special commissioner is that they must reside and own property in the county where the hearing is taking place. Most oftentimes, they are friends of the judge, and that can be both good and bad.

Native Americans got their compensation in the form of hot lead. I bet they would laugh at threads like this.

HTownAg98 said:

---

Now you're getting into corridor valuation, which in the appraisal world, is a term of art and has a very specific meaning. In these cases, I can't see how any individual landowner wouldn't meet the definition of having a corridor. Plus, this was already tried in Exxon v. Zwahr, and WestTex v. Bulanek, and it failed.

---

I've litigated cases on compensation. I haven't yet litigated a corridor case, so I'm not too deep into it. Maybe we could talk one day? I'd like to hear your thoughts, because I have some. My email is above if you are interested in talking shop.

queso1 said:

---

I don't necessarily disagree with you - remember, I am an advocate for the landowners. I'm against private companies taking private land, but perhaps the public carrier/utility argument makes sense - I don't know. Nevertheless, decades of law have recognized ED and has held that the compensation is land taken and damage to the remainder based on the highest and best use of the land. Most often, the highest and best use of the land is agricultural, and paid as such. But, what if the highest and best use was for the laying of pipeline?? What if a landowner recognized that his land is best suited for pipeline?? Hmmmmmmmm. Now things get a bit interesting.

---

Interesting thought. I work with public utilities, mainly water and sewer. Large sewer outfall mains often follow the streams, creeks, and rivers because it is the most efficient way for sewage to flow by gravity (ie. **** rolls downhill). As such much of their land is in the floodplain and not worth much, except in the cases where there are certain recreational aspects of being near the water that make them worth more.

I appreciate the discussion with you guys. OB delivers.

HTownAg98 said:

---

schmellba99 said:

---

Burdizzo said:

---

Yeah, I agree ED is a necessary evil. I just think it is too one-sided in favor of the operator, especially in terms of how the compensation is determined.

A century+ ago people wanted the railroad to come to their town because it meant commerce. Now rural landowners fight the railroad. Urban folks loves them some high speed rail, though. Go figure.

---

The compensation is determined by the county commission court, no? Those are elected officials.

---

No, they are called special commissioners. They are appointed by the court to hold the hearing. The only stipulation for being a special commissioner is that they must reside and own property in the county where the hearing is taking place. Most oftentimes, they are friends of the judge, and that can be both good and bad.

---

In Reeves County, I've heard of them just grabbing random people working at the courthouse.